This invention relates generally to sporting and athletic goods, and more specifically relates to apparatus useful in faciliatating safe walking by a skier while the latter is wearing conventional ski boots.
Conventional ski boots, including especially the more modern varieties thereof, are intentionally designed to be of generally inflexible construction. Indeed many modern ski boots are of substantially one-piece construction, and include a sole which is essentially inflexible. While such boots are deemed admirably suited to their primary purpose, i.e., as a means for effectively coupling the wearer's feet to his skis, the wearer finds that such boots are quite unadapted to walking once the wearer steps from his skis. Indeed, it is a markedly difficult operation for the skier to even progress the short distance often required in endeavoring to walk from a ski slop to a lodge or to a parked automobile.
The cited boot inflexibility, when further coupled with the fact that the bottom of the boots are commonly relatively flat, tends further, to make walking not only difficult, but also dangerous. This, of course, is especially the case in the environments in which such boots are employed, i.e., in the presence of snow and/or ice.
It may be further noted that if the wearer of such conventional boots does successfully and safely traverse the distance from his vehicle to the ski slope, he frequently finds that his boots have become caked with snow and ice. Before he can engage his skis, however, the encrusted snow and ice must be removed, but it is found that the process of dislodging same can be most awkward and even unsafe when the user is already encumbered with skiing equipment.
From time to time, it has been proposed to utilize devices attachable to a ski boot or the like, in order to facilitate walking and/or to improve the safety of walking in such boots. By and large, however, these approaches have met with quite limited success. E.g., it has been known to attach so-called "ice-creepers" to ski boots or to other types of boots or shoes. Such devices often include spikes, cleats or the like intended to grasp the underlying surface, which may be ice. While devices of this type do indeed increase the safety incidence to walking upon ice or snow, they do not simulate normal walking; and are quite unsafe for use on conventional surfaces such as indoors or in automobiles or other vehicles. There have also been attempts to develop devices for specific use with ski boots, which devices are intended to provide a foot motion in the wearer simulative of that experienced in normal walking. Reference may be had in this connection, e.g., to U.S. Pat. No. 3,665,620, which discloses an unusually configured walking member, which attaches to and depends from the sole of a ski boot, and is so shaped as to provide a forward rocking motion to the ski boot during the user's normal stride.
In general, however, known prior devices have not achieved a high degree of acceptance, as will be evident from the observable, very limited use of such devices in the relevant field.
In accordance with the foregoing, it may be regarded as an object of the present invention to provide a ski boot attachment, which is of simple, low-cost construction, and which when secured to a conventional ski boot, facilitates the wearer's normal walking by introducing motion to anatomical portions of the user which is simulative of that generated in normal walking.
It is a further object of the invention, to provide a ski boot attachment as above, which includes features intended to render walking safer, by increasing frictional engagement with the underlying ground.
It is a still further object of the present invention, to provide a ski boot attachment of the foregoing character, which is readily attached to and removed from the boots by the user, and which can thereby serve to preclude the snow and ice accumulation which would otherwise collect upon the boots during the wearer's walking in same.
It is yet an additional object of the present invention, to provide a ski boot attachment which when secured to a conventional ski boot, facilitates walking; which may be attached to a conventional boot in simple fashion; and which is adapted for use with boots of various sizes.